SCIENCE NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3112, 5 November 1913, Page 68

SCIENCE NOTES.

- Medicinal Virtues of Garlic.— From time immemorial garlic, which is grown all over India, has a high estimation there in domestic, medicine, and also in the ancient systems of the Hindu writers. It is recommended by the earliest of these writers (Shusruta) for improving the voice, intellect, and complexion, promoting the union of fractured bones, and helping to cure nearly all the ills that flesh is heir to. Its use is by no moans confined to India; in Ireland it is taken as an infusion together with whisky in colds and bronchitis, and farmers there and elsewhere apply it as a poultice in anthrax, eto. As a disinfectant and germicide, Dr Minchin says it is worthy the attention of bacteriologists, and he believes if applied as a poultice over the seat of inoculation it will prevent the development of hydrophobia in a person bitten by a rabid dog.—Popular Science Siftings. Clothing and Heat.— Experimenting on the conductibility of different stuffs, a scientist has found that doubling satin, cotton, and linen diminished the heat only from 3 per cent, to 6 per cent., while doubling buckskin, flannel, and cloth more or less thick diminished the heat to 10, 20, and even 30 per cent. These results show clearly that resistance of the passage of heat depends less upon the conductibility of the fibres than upon the thickness, the volume, and the texture of the fibres. In further evidence ho noted the cooling of a cylinder covered with wadding. When the w adding was strongly compressed the loss of heat was increased to 40 per cent. For this reason a wadded dressinggown and a vest of thick flannel are warmer at first than after they have been worn awhile. Pressure brings the filaments closer together, and renders the material more permeable to heat.

Victims of tho cocaine habit suffer from various affections. One is the so-called “coke-bug',” an imaginary insect under tho skin of the hand, and there is a disease of tho nostrils, commonly called “cocaine creeper,” which has puzzled many doctors. Some have diagnosed it as a symptom of the specific complaint, hut Dr Bisscrio, of Paris, at one time doctor-in-chief at the Rothschild Hospital, states that it is merely a temporary affliction which ceases with tho hahit. Apparently the cocaine powder prevents tho tissues of the nostrils from performing their proper functions, and so causes the matter to clog. Occasionally tho poison thus sot in will oat through the nose. Poisoning is often sot up by the habit cocaine fiends have of using knives, hairpins, etc., to free their nostrils from the coagulated matter. A Novel Tramcar.— Successful tests have been made over one of London's tramway routes of an entirely now type of tramcar, propelled by electricity developed in tho car itself. The car, which is much smaller than those running on tho conduit linos, has a petrol-driven engine at one end under tho stairway, connected with a dynamo. Underneath tho centre of tho car and geared to tho wheels ia tho electric motor, driven by the current generated in the dynamo; while underneath tho stairs at the other end of tho car is the radiator. The driver can operate the motor from either end of fhe car in tho same way as with existing electric cars. In most respects tho now self-propelled vehicle answers quite as satisfactorily, as those already in use, though it cannot bo pulled up so quickly nor started so readily.

Shun thc-teapot Warning. — For the last 10 years or so a number of Irish doctors interested in mental diseases have been trying to locate the causes of the widespread lunacy among the people of County Kerry. It has remained for an eminent ecclesiastic actually to fix it. The Most Rov. Dr Maugan, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Kerry, now attributes tbis sad mental state to a far too free indulgence in the use and consumption of tea among the young people. As a consequence he has issued a warning to mothers to be more sparing in the supply of that beverage to their children “Before the teapot," says his Grace, “became such a common domestic utensil, Kerry homes produced a race of men and women that was the admiration of Europe. Instead of beautiful muscular development we have now a population of stunted growths exhibiting symptoms of mental degeneracy. I beg of you all, therefore, to shun the teapot. ’ Coffee from Figs.—

Ever since coffee has been, a popular beverage efforts have been made to find substitutes for it, either as mere adulterants, like chicory, or for the sake of greater wholesomeness or cheapness. Rye and other grains, lupine, acorns, beets, and carrots have all been thus used, but the fig coffee, or “ feigen-kaffee,’' which has latterly come into use in Austria and elsewhere, is a decided novelty. M. Trabut, of Algiers, says that an excellent coffee can ho made from dried and roasted figs, which need not bo of the first quality. •They are dried in the eun or in evaporating pans, according to climate, and then roasted in ovens till brown or almost black and quite brittle. They are then ground up, and the resultant powder is pressed into tablets. These must bo kept dry. When made use of they are merely dissolved in hot water. One hundred kilos of the dry figs give 75 kilos of the dry powder. The figs cost 15 francs, and the powder sells for 60 francs wholesale, and 100 or more at retail, so that the trade ought to be profitable if a demand can be created. The beverage is said to be agreeable in colour and flavour, with u, somewhat sweeter taste than that made from chicory.

Defects of Diet.— “In consequence of many very undesirable innovations in the matter of some of the most important of our foodstuffs.” writes Dr James Oliver in the British Medical Journal,” “derangements attributable wholely to our dietary are on the increase, and it is becoming more and more difficult for our profession not only to combat those derangements, ..but to treat diseases generally on sound scientific principles. Time .was when the wheat flour from which our bread -was made contained all the essential elements of nutrition. To-day, however, many of these essential elements are either abstracted or so altered by the roller process of milling the wheat that bread made from wheat flour is no longer the complete ration that it used to bo. Moreover, quite recently there has sprung up the pernicious practice of subjecting flour which would not otherwise be readily marketable to the action of some bleaching reagent, and thus we are confronted with a new clement of danger to our bodies. Rico, which has for centuries been the food of the majority of mankind, is now unfortunately so altered by polishing and coating that it is no longer the wholesome, easily digestible, and highly valuable food that it was wont to be. Polished and coated rice, when partaken of extensively as a food, is apt, in fact, to so derange the metabolism of the nervous system that the sale of this cereal thus altered should be prohibited. Again, butter made from pasteurised milk is not equal in nutritive value to butter made from milk as drawn from the cow. Pasteurisation, it must be remembered, is practised _ for the purpose not merely of destroying some of the micro-organisms which, through carelessness, may have found their way into the milk, but because it enables the manufacturer to produce a butter of uniform taste and appearance from many different milks. When milk is raised to a temperature between 140 deg. F. and 185 deg. F., fatty acids are driven off, and other important chemical changes which materially lower the nutritive value of the butter are engendered. Ic is on this account that renovated butter is loss wholesome and of less nutritive value than sound butter.